After almost four decades in a psychiatric hospital, John Hinckley Jr., 61, will be packing his bags early next month and live with his mother at her Virginia home full time.
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“The decision to prosecute six police officers was not, and has never been, an indictment on the entire Baltimore police department”, Mosby said. “She should be held accountable”.
“It was disgraceful what she did and the way she did it”, he told reporters in Florida. And the news conference that she had where they were guilty before anybody even knew the facts.
Marilyn Mosby speaks to press in Baltimore.
Gray’s death set off a series of sometimes violent protests that rocked the city and prompted Black Lives Matter demonstrations across the nation.
Tawanda Jones is a Baltimore activist whose brother Tyrone West died three years ago after an encounter with Baltimore police.
But Warren Alperstein, an attorney in private practice who also watched the trials in their entirety, said Mosby’s inability to convict “was a total failure by the state’s attorney’s office”. Three had been acquitted earlier.
Baltimore state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby, the passionate prosecutor who was hoping to see the case through to the end, acknowledges that there is an “inherent bias” whenever “police police themselves”.
On Wednesday, she was fiery and indignant as she spoke from behind a podium across the street from the public-housing complex where Gray was arrested.
“Lead detectives that were completely uncooperative and started a counter-investigation to disprove the state’s case”, Mosby said, shortly followed by the main accusation.
It’s also updated its “use of force” policy which, in time, could help remedy a police force long plagued by accusations of racial bias. However, the judge ruled that the officers didn’t act in an unreasonable way or were aware of and chose to ignore the substantial risk by placing Gray in a police van without a seatbelt, which is required for reckless endangerment.
Gray’s stepfather, Richard Shipley, said Wednesday that he supported Mosby. “We do not believe Freddie Gray killed himself”.
“I assume that they dropped the charges because they didn’t have the evidence to proceed with the last two cases”, he said in a brief interview.
Prosecutors dropped all charges today (July 27) against the three remaining police officers who were accused in the death of Freddie Gray, The Baltimore Sun reports. Mosby had promised “justice” for Gray’s death, which highlighted the inequalities experienced by black communities in the country.
Bates said a “nightmare” began for the six officers when they were charged on May 1, 2015. He was acquitted last month by Judge Barry Williams after an eight-day bench trial. “Creating notes that were drafted after the case was launched to contradict the medical examiner’s conclusion”, she said.
Gray suffered a severe neck injury after his arrest on April 2015, apparently while being transported in the back of a police van.
Officer William Porter’s trial ended with a hung jury and a mistrial in December.
The decision from Baltimore’s state prosecutor now makes it unlikely that anyone will be punished for what was one of the most inflammatory deaths of unarmed black men blamed on police, fueling a nationwide protest movement.
After Officer Garrett Miller testified that he alone arrested Gray outside the Gilmor Homes complex, prosecutors changed their theory of assault in Officer Edward Nero’s case, arguing that any officer who arrests a suspect without probable cause could be liable for prosecution.
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The prosecution’s announcement Wednesday closed the criminal cases against the officers.
